HEART SCIENCE FOR THE NON-SCIENTIST

Heart science arrives sooner or later.

The good news is you will be told you have the heart of someone twenty years younger than you.

The bad news is you might be told you the heart of someone twenty years older than you.

If you max out on bacon every meal, with eggs cooked in bacon fat, and consider no meal complete without smoking at least half a pack of Lucky Strikes at the table, brace for bad news.

The main point here is listening to the doctor. It’s making yourself trust his opinion and believe they have your best interests in mind.

Can you do that? Sure you can.

I’ve had a great run with doctors from the start.

Born in an Army hospital, I was ready to be named Chevy for the car I was nearly delivered in.

Now I wonder about those people with car names like Ford. Hopefully they were delivered in a Galaxy 500. Is there a better way to start then in something called a Galaxy 500?

I grew up under the care of Dr. Chiapuzio. He was the team doctor for the local high school and his brother was the wrestling coach.

I Couldn’t Have Been In Better Hands

The school nurse had a son who coached high school football, so it was an ongoing connection between sports and medicine, and this was early in the Sports Medicine era.

I gave medicine a shot when I joined the Army. My dad, a decorated Marine during the Korean War, recommended I train as a medic. I like to think he did it because of his experience.

He’d been shot a few times and shipped to Japan to recover. He met lots of medical people and maybe he saw a need for improvement? Or he didn’t want his boy to get hurt?

Either way, I was an Army medic and as such met lots of doctors during my enlistment. Due to where I was stationed, I lived off base with roommates.

My roommates were medical students.

Heart Science Not For Everybody

One of the roomies told a story about a classmate, a real cut-up.

For a joke he cut a finger off of his cadaver and sent to a friend in a joke ransom note.

No one laughed and the student was expelled.

Another roomie said they wanted to do orthopedic surgery because it’s not emergency medicine, and not the sort of practice that gets calls in the middle of the night.

I admired his planning.

The best quote from the time: “My professor told the class we were there because we showed we were smart enough. He added that some were smarter than others, but at the end of the day, the lowest ranked student still graduates with an MD.”

Those are the guys who didn’t get into heart science. But I could be wrong.

Believe In The Science

I like doctors who use visual aids.

This is the set-up when I visited his office. Since I had a few minutes, I took a good look at the heart model.

Every heart in the model platform comes apart in several pieces, which I didn’t know when I picked one up and it fell apart.

Who likes to see someone breaking their stuff without permission? I put it all back together before anyone showed up, but I believed the model was based on a human heart.

Here’s why: During my Army Medic days one of the roommates asked if wanted to meet his cadaver. Of course I wanted to meet his cadaver.

We walked into a cold room, a big cold room full of long metal tables with large bags on top of them. That’s where the cadavers were stored. His guy’s name was Goldie.

If you didn’t know, and I didn’t, cadavers donated to medical science go through a few anatomy classes. Goldie looked well studied. I treated him with respect. I didn’t know what to expect, but well used body wasn’t it.

My roomie explained how it all worked. Thanks, Miers.

For The People Who Don’t Believe In Any Science

Just because YOU don’t believe something doesn’t make it false.

And if you believe something is false because someone told you it was false is worse yet.

If the local weatherman says it’s raining, is it your duty to prove him right or wrong, or just look out the window for confirmation?

If a heart doctor says you have a problem, but your Uncle Ralph says he’s had it worse and never thought of wasting time seeing a doctor, who do you believe?

Step on a rusty nail and what’s the first thing? When did you have your last tetanus shot? Should you go into an urgent care and get patched up, or take the neighbor’s advice and ignore it? He’ll even toss you a bandaid.

Whether you want to believe it or not, you have a heart in your chest like everyone else. Yes, you are exceptional, a real individual, one of a kind, but you have something in common with the rest of humanity.

You have a heart, a heart muscle, and its beat is a flex. This is the muscular flex that pushes blood through your body, not the instinctual flex you do whenever you pass a mirror.

Cardiac doctors work on hearts like yours. They use heart science. That’s their specialty. When you feel weak, out of breath, start sweating, feel pains around your chest and back like never before, who do you trust?

Three Choices Rise To The Top

Your clergyman carries a Princeton degree in theology. He can tell you about the saints who have died from heart problems. If he doesn’t tell you to see a doctor, find a new church.

Next comes your political fan favorite. If they look you straight in the eye and tell you there’s nothing wrong, that it’s all in your head, you might reconsider your next vote.

The best choice is a cardiac heart doctor referral. They’ve spent a lifetime looking at the heart and heart functions of hearts just like yours.

What would you rather do, pray for your heart while your life fades away?

Take a recommendation from a political party angling for your vote and contributions while your life fades away?

Or contact a heart doctor steeped in heart science with the tools and meds to improve your heart functions and return to a healthy life?

Now replace heart with covid and go through the process again.

How does it add up this time?